


Mended

by misbegotten



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-30
Updated: 2010-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbegotten/pseuds/misbegotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>there is love that spreads like a stain of ink in absorbent cloth</i> - Diane Wakoski</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mended

**Author's Note:**

> This is a different take on the third season, spanning from directly after "Pretense" through "Crystal Skull". Spoilers and/or required viewing: First Commandment, Foothold, Pretense, Urgo, A Hundred Days, Shades of Grey, New Ground, Maternal Instinct, Crystal Skull
> 
> The poem in the final section is from Diane Wakoski's "With Rings On Her Fingers &amp; Bells On Her Toes, She Shall Have Music Wherever She Goes," from her collection _Smudging_.

**Part I: "Soon, with your help, I will be free of this demon." (Pretense)**

Her hair was beautiful. How could words do it justice? He didn't associate words with it anyway; it was sensation, touch, soft curls melting between his fingers. Her hair spread like a raven halo when she leaned forward to kiss him, a sensuous shadow on his skin. Her eyes... god, her eyes were dark even in the brightest sun, their sparkling depths drawing him down, inexorably consuming him. Lips that touched only his -- smiling in the daytime, luring him into gentle, languorous rhythms in the dark. He could feel them now...

Daniel rarely woke with a start, with that pulse-throbbing, chest-tightening convulsion of horror that marked a real nightmare. This was worse: a gradual swimming out of dream's depths until his eyes were open again, a tight track of tears on his cheek.

He was awake now, following the familiar routine. Blink, clear the mist from his brain. Don't bother with the glasses. It's too early, too late to contemplate the neon glow of the clock. Blink again. Breathe.

When had he moved the phone to the night stand? He couldn't remember, exactly. The clutter beside the bed was always growing -- clock, phone, stack of books that threatened to topple, Kleenex box particularly for those post-trip allergy attacks...

That's right. After Netu. Was it before or after Maybourne and his marionettes trashed the SGC? Okay, not fair, Daniel. But dammit, he'd read the report -- if the idiot had just listened to Sam in the first place, the firefight wouldn't have been necessary. Nor all those hours they'd spent chasing shorts in the electrical system, recalibrating the Gate computers... Well, Sam was the only member of SG-1 who had been any help there. His own inactivity during the day had only made the nights worse.

Ah, yes. That's when he'd moved the phone.

His fingers dialed of their own accord. Two rings. He always gave her two rings. Three was too much, insistent enough to push through the haze of sleep. Two was just right -- a nudge at the subconscious if she was asleep, one which she might remember the next morning and acknowledge with a squeeze on his shoulder as he hunched over coffee in the commissary. Two was a gentle inquiry if she was awake: the equivalent of poking his head through the door of the lab to see if she wanted company, felt like talking, was working too hard again. Two wasn't intrusive.

She picked up after the first half ring.

* * *

Channels, channels everywhere... but no port in the storm. No refuge for the surfer, buffeted by infomercials and late-night syndication in an endless clicking parade. Is this real life, Sam wondered idly, as images flickered past her. Is cooking a whole chicken in a toaster oven really the dream of the middle class family? Did every living room but hers now have a total body gym?

"Get a grip, kid," she heard that impatient voice in her head. It certainly wasn't a conscience. Just a little echo of Dad, she suspected -- Dad pre-Selmak, who took advantage of Jacob Carter's laugh lines, stretching the old coot's face (meant affectionately, General sir!) into unexpected smiles. Must be a rough work-out for those poor muscles. But it probably didn't hurt, given the symbiote's healing abilities no no no, not going to think about Tok'ra tonight.

Click, click, click. Buxom models play-acting as private detectives on channel 32. What is it like to have that much cleavage? Is it easier to have a relationship with a double D-size cup? Does it make dating and explorations in the dark and engagements and breakups less awkward? Geez, does she even know how to hold that fake gun?

Majors know how to use guns. Okay, so maybe Captain Carter couldn't shoot when she should have (the sharp, sensuous pressure of his fingertips on her shoulders, at her hips, Jonas don't stop, Jonas we know it won't work). Major Carter can shoot, though. Major Carter can break a Goa'uld in two with a hand device. But give her a gun, dammit. Let her have a chance with Apophis, who saved her and broke her and used her and no no no Netu. No Tok'ra tonight.

She'd brought the phone with her when she stumbled out to the couch. Two security blankets: mom's blue and white afghan, and a portable handset with a friendly glowing green keypad. Reach out and touch someone. But not too often. Don't abuse that gentle rapport, a friendship so unexpectedly comforting that it still surprised her with its simplicity. Sam glanced at the phone longingly, but left it balanced on the arm of the sofa.

Now there was a problem worth thinking about. Daniel had always been amiable, generous with his colleague ("Captain-Doctor, you're going to love this"), open-hearted and too perceptive in the face of her despair (oh she despised him just that teeny-tiny little bit for laying her bare when she thought Cassie was going to die). But when had he become her best friend?

Not that she had any illusions about it. He wouldn't see it that way, would undoubtedly be surprised -- the Colonel was his best friend, after all. Just thinking about it like that made her feel as if she was back in grade school, fidgeting miserably on the playground because her best friend had a different best friend, and didn't belong to her anymore.

But it wasn't like that, she chided herself. It wasn't childish and petty. They were a team -- all of them -- and the closest thing she'd had to a family in years (wouldn't Mark be surprised if Selmak made an appearance at Thanksgiving dinner, asking puzzled questions about candied yams).

But somewhere along the way Daniel became the one who knew when she was frazzled, when she was lying, when she needed a coffee and muffin break, or company at the campfire. The one who didn't mind a phone call at 2 am if things got really bleak. But don't push it, Sam. Just because another nightmare has made sleep impossible, it doesn't mean the brightest parts of SG-1 (Lou said it, didn't he? "The best, the brightest, the most sarcastic Earth has to offer") should both be groggy and hollow-eyed.

She looked at the phone. Don't dial, don't dial, don't dial, (call me) don't dial.

Wow. Telepathy works!

* * *

"Hey," she answered, her tone thick with welcome and relief. He was befuddled, sure for a moment that he was immersed in a different sort of dream.

"Uh, hey Sam. It's Daniel."

She smiled; he could feel it down the phone line. "I know," she answered softly. Then, with what sounded like forced cheerfulness, "You called just in time. I was about to spend my life's savings on porcelain dolls from the Shopping Channel."

He huffed quietly, a soft exhalation of sympathy. "I told you cable was a waste of money." Daniel wedged an elbow in the plush of the mattress and pushed himself up, folding his pillow over as a ledge. He felt calmer now, the memories that had twisted his sleep fading as he concentrated on her voice. "Do they have anything more useful? Particle accelerators? Quantum mirrors?" He could picture her, curled on the edge of her couch. She hadn't been asleep -- she'd picked up the phone almost instantly. Insomnia, he diagnosed. Again.

"Ugh. Actually, those dolls are kind of creepy. I had one when I was a kid, and I thought that it stared at me wherever I was in the room."

"Hm. Like the Mona Lisa," he offered.

She laughed quietly. "Yes, Daniel. Like the Mona Lisa. But in a less refined, more nightmarish sort of way."

Nightmares were not something he wanted to dwell on. "Coffee?" he suggested, changing the subject.

Sam was quiet for a moment, probably cataloguing the contents of her cabinets. "Tea," she pronounced, and he could hear her scrambling off the couch. He pushed his own covers aside, and stretched a little, hearing the crackles and pops which signaled that it had been too long since he'd worked out. Jack, who routinely gave Daniel a drubbing in their lengthy workouts, had taken some time off to check in on Skaara at Abydos. While Daniel hoped that the boy -- a man now, really -- was settling back into his pre-Klorel life, he had his doubts. What did Skaara dream of, when he slept?

He pushed the thought aside. "Just a sec," he said into the phone, then abandoned the bedroom receiver and padded to the kitchen. He scratched his bare chest absently as he yawned, and picked up the phone just beyond the kitchen door before turning to face the sink. "I need to do some dishes," he sighed into the receiver as he contemplated a stack of unwashed cutlery, then fished a mug out of the cabinet.

"Or buy more paper plates," she snickered.

He filled the mug with water and put it in the microwave, saying, with as much dignity as he could muster, "I still have paper plates. But I haven't resorted to plastic forks."

He could hear her kettle whistling already, in the background. "Why not? You could steal them from the commissary. The Colonel does. And I think Teal'c has a stash of them in his room."

Daniel plucked a tea bag from the box -- apple cinnamon? was that all she'd left him? -- and dunked it in his too-hot mug. "In case of emergencies?" he mused. "Like when we try to make him use chopsticks?"

"I don't think we'll be doing Chinese again anytime soon," she commented mildly. "He wasn't impressed with his fortune."

He paused in mid-sip to join her in the chorus. "You'll meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger."

As they chuckled together, he noted that the last of the tension had left her voice. Not insomnia, he decided. Dreams of Jolinar again, maybe. Or Apophis. Or maybe even Seth. Sam Carter's nights had, of late, been peopled with a whole host -- he winced at the involuntary pun -- of symbiotes. He'd caught her catnapping in the lab too many times, and once even stretched out on a cot in Janet's domain, to miss the fact that she wasn't sleeping well at home.

It was that time he'd found her in the infirmary that he'd felt most like a fool, blind to her demons even when he'd come to depend on her so much. She'd been curled into a tense ball, muscles twitching as she fought... something in her dream.

The infirmary had been blessedly quiet; even Janet had stepped out. He'd knelt beside the cot, stroking the hair at her forehead as he tried to lull Sam out of the nightmare, and silently counted the number of times she had done the same for him since Sha're died. She'd sat on the couch with him until the wee hours, force-feeding him old movies and microwave popcorn. She'd let him interrupt her watch when they camped on strange worlds, and he had gratefully replaced impossible sleep with comforting conversation in muted tones.

But she rarely said anything about her own nightmares. She was too stubborn, too much the Major in charge, to let the facade slip during the daytime. Night, however, served as a time-out for both of them. Their time, somehow.

The thought produced a disconcerting, hollow feeling inside him; he took refuge in his mug. "Bleah," he complained, realizing that the flavor of the tea had not improved upon cooling. "Why aren't we having coffee, again?"

"Because," she reminded him, "it's 3:30 in the morning" -- he groaned -- "and you normally don't drink caffeine to improve your sleeping habits."

"What about killing your palate? Do normal people do that voluntarily?"

"You have to have a palate to begin with," Sam replied sweetly. He heard the rustle of fabric, and decided she was back on the couch.

"I have a palate," he protested. "I can even cook!"

"Uh huh. Prove it." Oh, her tone spoke volumes. She knew him too well.

"I will!" he announced, and deposited his mug on the counter with a decisive thump.

"Without the microwave," she continued idly, and he faltered.

"Riiight. No microwave." Daniel grimaced as he mentally reviewed his repertoire. Maybe Jack could suggest something.... No. Then Jack would want to be there too, and they'd both taunt him instead of just Sam. "You're on," he said, with more confidence than he felt, and carefully untangled himself from the phone cord as he moved back toward the kitchen door. "Tomorrow?" he suggested as he tried to remember what day it was.

"Today tomorrow, or tomorrow tomorrow?"

"Er..." Between living in the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain and exploring off-world, it was hard to find time to wash dishes. "Tomorrow tomorrow."

"Chicken," she tsked. "The Colonel comes back in..." -- checking the clock, no doubt -- "four hours. And since the probe from P4X-884 looks promising, we'll probably be busy."

"One can only hope," he muttered, and she chuckled lightly.

"Tomorrow," she said firmly. "And Daniel?"

"Hm?"

"Get some sleep. Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"G'night, Sam."

Daniel replaced the receiver, cast a glance at the tea mug, then abandoned it without remorse. He yawned as he paced back to the bedroom -- maybe dreamless sleep, at least for a couple of hours, wasn't out of the question.

He settled himself on the mattress, and pulled the sheet up to cover his feet. As he turned, trying to get comfortable, he remembered that the bedroom phone was still off the hook. The receiver was cool in his hand; instinctively, he brought it close to his ear. There was no dial tone, however -- just faint noise in the background, soft murmuring punctuated by staccato laugh tracks. Sam had not yet turned off her phone, he realized. Maybe she'd forgotten.

He listened to her surf through channels until he fell asleep.

* * *

**Part II: "Appearances may be deceiving." (Urgo)**

He had beautiful hands. Gentle, yet assertive fingers teased her shoulders, traced the path of her collarbone, cupped under her chin to raise her face to his caress. His hands were clever, dexterous, full of character -- as he lightly brushed her cheek, she could feel the coarse track of his fingernails, and the hollowed callous where his pen rested when he was at work. His fingers telegraphed his intention with the slightest pressure, beckoning, guiding her.

Someone spoke harshly in her ear. "Jolinar..."

"Dammit." Sam did not swear, as a general rule. But amalgams of memory and fantasy were punctuating her sleep with depressing regularity. They interrupted her rest with nightmares of blinding, writhing pain (blood welled up in half moons on her palm, and Jolinar tried not give him the pleasure of a scream); Jacob's skin pale and brittle, like the paper in some of Daniel's old books, as he lay in the hospital bed; an oppressive weight of recrimination and loss (a remnant of Rosha's bitterness? she wasn't sure); Martouf's grey eyes, so perilously needy, but tinged with Lantesh's calculating, glinting stare; the hard, dizzying pressure of Jonas at her back, his hands kneading her muscles...

It wasn't Jonas anymore. It hadn't been for quite a while, actually. Sam pushed the afghan off of her, and it slid noiselessly to the floor. As she flexed her toes, pressing her weight into the yielding fabric on the arms of the couch, she tried to put a face to the man who had so ruthlessly invaded her dreams lately. Since Urgo, in fact. What had that infuriating, endearing invader set loose in her nocturnal fantasies? As she tried to grasp the fading traces of her dream, Sam wondered when she'd begun to classify fantasies of men without faces as nightmares.

The phone had slipped down between the cushions of the couch. No princess, she. Like a good soldier, she'd developed the ability to sleep anywhere -- on surfaces marred by twigs, stones, disturbingly fuzzy/wriggly objects, much less the hard plastic edge of a cordless phone. Round, mushy peas would be a pleasant change.

"Wullo?" His voice was lazy with sleep, but she ruthlessly quashed any threads of guilt.

"You still owe me a dinner."

"Mmm. I was dreaming about food."

"Really?" She propped her feet up, and, in the flickering light of the television, idly considered painting her toenails. Maybe a nice black. Or green. Then she sighed internally. Why were even her 'daring' choices disturbingly camouflage-like colors? She should go with Air Force blue and be done with it.

"Nah." Daniel stretched -- she could hear it roll up from his feet, crinkling the bedclothes, jostling the phone, ending in a tight, barely suppressed yawn. Sometimes he reminded her of a cat, sedate at rest, frenetic in action, always limber. "But it's as good a conversation starter as any."

"And a good way to change the topic," she agreed. "Should I let you go back to sleep, or badger you?"

"Oh, harass me, please. It wasn't enough to get Jack's incessant whining as Doc put us through another round of brain scans."

Sam came close to a giggle; she couldn't help it. As disturbing as a further ten lost hours were (she could still see Harriman's sympathetic shrug from the control room as they trudged down the Gate ramp, past the heat of General Hammond's scowl), Janet's ministrations were a small price to pay for blessedly quiet privacy. "Have you been dreaming about food, really? Or other things that you didn't normally dream about before Urgo?" She pillowed her head on the crook of her arm -- the phone carefully wedged in place -- and traced circles on the faded fabric of the sofa cushion.

"I don't think so." Daniel sounded more alert, now. She'd given him a puzzle to chew on, and his tone brightened in response. "I've been sleeping better, actually. I can't remember what I've been dreaming about."

"Pie, no doubt. Are we going to have pie at our dinner?"

"Gah." It was a snort. She smiled in response. "I'm not going to hear the end of this until I pay up, am I?"

"Probably not." Her couch smelled stale. It's not designed as a bed, dummy, she reminded herself. An occasional nap, yes. Why was it easier to sleep off-world? "Should I skip breakfast and lunch, in preparation?"

"I don't think so. I definitely don't intend to whip up a gourmet meal on a --" Daniel interrupted himself, both mindful that it was an unsecured line and overcome by a yawn that he could not suppress, " -- in a strange kitchen."

"Gourmet, huh?" she teased, but relented. There was the remote control, on the floor -- maybe Iron Chef was on the cooking network. "Go back to sleep. We've got a big day ahead." Several days, in fact. There was a possibility of naquada on P5C-768 (what did the natives call it? Edora?). Naquada, she thought with satisfaction, was good.

"Yes'm," he mumbled. His voice had faded, but suddenly came back intently. "Sam?"

"Hm?"

"Sweet dreams."

"Goodnight, Daniel."

* * *

**Part III: "I'll... make a wish." (A Hundred Days)**

It hurt. God, it hurt. His failure tore at him. She was gone -- no eyes flashing in amusement as he waded through unfamiliar grammars, no lips curved in a soft, yielding smile as he tried to find some purchase, some hold on the belief that he could protect herhelpherstopherfrom twisting with anguish. He tried to call her name, but that too was gone. It came out only as a garbled cry.

His own shout woke him. Daniel willed his fingers to loosen their grip on the sheets, which were sweaty where he had clawed at them. He waited a moment, listening to the harsh wheeze of his breath, then scrambled out of the covers. He needed a shower; yesterday's clothes were wrinkled, heavy with the stink of his dream. As he rose, he glanced at the phone, but knew there was no point in picking up the receiver. There was no one to call.

* * *

"I owe you a dinner."

"Hm?" She didn't look up, didn't register that his hair was still wet from the shower, that he'd changed clothes, that any time at all had passed since they last saw one another. Sam was bent over the workbench, soldering together bits of metal and wire for her particle beam generator. Her brow was wrinkled so tightly in concentration that it was a wonder she needed tools at all; she looked as if she could will the pieces together, fuse them with the fury of her impatience.

"I owe you a dinner," Daniel repeated, and this time she lifted her head. She smiled, that distracted smile that she offered Janet or Lou or Hammond when they asked how she was doing, how things were going. Teal'c didn't ask. He was, Daniel knew, infused with the same sort of frustration that they all were, but the Jaffa undoubtedly recognized a kindred determination in Sam. He dutifully bided his time with SG-6 on search and rescue missions -- if he rescued a bit too aggressively, the General had not yet called him on it -- and gave their Major Carter space in which to work.

Daniel couldn't do that. He wouldn't lose Sam to get Jack back.

"Hey," he continued, more sharply than he intended. "I thought you were going to get some sleep and something to eat. That was the plan, remember?" When he'd left, she'd still been hunched over the computer, muttering about programming problems and feedback potential. But she spent just as much time away from the keyboard these days, fashioning a working prototype in the stark, too-bright lab.

"I will. I just want to finish this part -- damn!" Sam dropped the torch. It fell to the bench, its flame instantly extinguished without her guiding pressure, then skittered against a pile of thin sheets of metal and continued on to the floor. They regarded it with identical glares, she with her index finger in her mouth. "Ow."

"Sam, I left hours ago," he sighed, going to her and prying her hand towards him. "Let me see," he demanded testily. Just looking at her made him tired, his back hurt, his eyes watery. She was a walking -- no, make that staggering -- 'before' advertisement for total collapse.

She yielded her arm reluctantly and he inspected her finger -- thankfully it had escaped the full flame -- noting as he did the marks of her work on her usually immaculate hands. Band-aids, scratches, and burns, oh my.

He kept her hand in his while he put another to her forehead, then peered briefly into her eyes. "Yup," he pronounced, trying to muster up a reserve of good humor. "You're suffering from deprivation. I prescribe a Doctor Daniel Jackson gourmet meal." As she opened her mouth to protest, he continued quickly, "But since they border on the mythical, you'll have to settle for Jell-o from the mess hall."

He counted the seconds as she weighed her exhaustion against the ruthless timetable she'd set for herself. Finally, blessedly, she made the decision; he saw it in her eyes, in the slight sag of her frame and a tensing of her hand, where he still held it in his. She nodded wordlessly and then, as if falling, leaned into him.

He caught her in a surprised, relieved embrace. She was muffled against his t-shirt, her fingers crushing the fabric at his back. Daniel let her settle into him, resting his arms across her shoulders, one hand reaching up to touch her silky hair.

"You're not that kind of doctor," she said finally, raising her head to look at him, smiling from a face hollowed by fatigue. "And despite the fact that you've been threatening me for at least two months, I've seen no evidence that you can cook." Sam let her head drop again, and spoke against his chest. "But you're a good friend. Thanks."

"Well I'm mad at you," he complained. She stiffened slightly, and he continued hastily, "I was going to call you, but knew you weren't home."

She laughed then, only softly, but a genuine laugh nonetheless. "What were you dreaming about?"

"Sha're, I think. I don't know." He shrugged slightly, trying to remember now. Maybe it had been Jack; O'Neill had certainly dominated his waking thoughts since they'd lost him on Edora. Or an old dream, one about his parents. Perhaps just an accumulation of loss, period. All that was left to him now of the dream was that feeling of drowning in despair.

Sam didn't have time to dream, he thought with a tinge of frustration. That would require sleeping. Janet Fraiser's troubled, sotto voce remark about 'separation anxiety' came back to him. Suddenly, Daniel was back on the Tok'ra ship, quashing his worries in the face of Sam's implacable determination to find her father. How could he fault the pattern of her own drive, when it so closely echoed that which had kept him going as long as Sha're lived?

"Sam, take some time off. Go see Cassie, if you can't sleep. Or Mark. Or maybe we can get in touch with your dad." He wasn't sure that the latter was even possible, but the suggestion lent an air of normalcy to an impossible situation. Either Jack survived the meteor shower, or he hadn't. And Sam's attempts to wield science as a shield couldn't change that.

She was so still that he wondered, for an instant, if she had fallen asleep in his arms. Finally she said, quietly, "Janet's been on my case too, you know. But Daniel... I have to do this. I won't leave him there. We should never have come home without him." She stepped back, and with her absence, Daniel was acutely aware of how closely her body had been molded against his.

This was not a conversation they should be having face to face, he thought abruptly, not here in the flourescent-lit lab. It belonged to the realm of dim lights, of coffee at midnight and comfortable silences. Where was a phone when he needed one?

"I know," he said simply. And then, lacking any better comfort, he leaned forward and kissed her forehead gently. "We'll get Jack back. Even if it kills you." He forced his lips into a smile. "In the meantime... Jell-o."

"Jell-o," she agreed as she pulled away from his embrace. They turned towards the door together.

"So what's the pool at?" she asked lightly as they abandoned her cluttered workbench. "Will I be able to make this thing work, or not?"

"There isn't one," he replied, suddenly cheered by the memory of Lou Ferretti's sly smile when he told Daniel the news. "Nobody would bet against you."

* * *

**Part IV: "Sir, isn't this against regulations?" (Shades of Grey)**

Her breath was gone, stolen by his demanding lips. Those lips... they burned a path across her forehead, moistening her skin, grasping her attempts at breath and returning them as feverish exhalations across her closed eyelids, down the line of her cheek, nuzzling her chin. At last -- finally! -- they rested at her mouth, insisting on entrance, and she yielded impatiently. When she found her breath again, his touch was gone. "Daniel," she whispered...

"Whoa." She was awake now. Boy, was she ever awake.

Sam blinked at the ceiling. She was in her own bed -- no flickering tv movies to illuminate her surroundings, just a flustered Major alone with the remnants of her dream. Staying in the bedroom had been an act of will; frustration and incomprehension at the Colonel (JackbloodybewilderinghurtfulO'Neill) and his recent actions had added a new element of tension to her thoughts. But these weren't the sort of dreams she'd thought to find awaiting her...

She didn't bother looking at the phone next to the bed. No way.

* * *

He was alone at the SGC, which was a near-impossibility. Yet here he was, standing in the Gateroom, with not a soul around. Maybe he should take a trip, a little holiday. He could go to Edora and kick Jack's ass, demand to know what right O'Neill had to leave them now. Or he could forget about Jack, forget about the Goa'uld, and find a little corner of the galaxy to call his own. The thought appealed to him; he wasn't surprised when the dialing sequence began, and the swirling waves of the event horizon beckoned him. And yet he waited...

"You ready?" she asked. She was in casual clothes, a scarlet shirt so bright it danced before his eyes, and well-worn jeans. He was lost, for a moment, in the reflective blue of her eyes, oceans of fact and desire and intriguing possibilities carefully hidden until he was close enough to fall into them.

He threaded his fingers through hers, pulling her up the ramp. "I'm ready. Let's go." They stepped through the Gate, accompanied by the sound of applause and raucous cheers...

Daniel blinked in confusion, and fumbled for his glasses. He couldn't find them, remembered he'd left them in the bedroom, and settled instead for blindly crawling off the couch towards the tv. The audience on the screen -- encouraged by the talk show host -- continued its catcalls and exclamations, until he found the knob and the program winked out of existence. He stayed on the floor, though, and eventually rolled over, flinging his arms out against the soft friction of the carpet.

That qualified as downright weird. When had he started dreaming about Sam and himself running away -- literally -- together? Sure, she'd appeared in his dreams occasionally, sometimes even in circumstances which he'd never tell her about without dying of embarrassment on the spot. But this...

Maybe he should get up, get some tea, clear his head.

Maybe he'd stay right here.

* * *

Daniel burrowed through the obligatory kitchen junk drawer, and called, "Chinese or Mexican?" He withdrew a sheaf of take-out menus and waved them like a makeshift fan, but Sam was too engrossed in her current project to notice.

She sighed noisily, presumably contemplating her food options as she attempted to untangle the cords necessary to reconnect the VCR to his ancient television. "Hmm. Since you're obviously not going to cook for me tonight, can we just skip right to the popcorn?" she suggested, patiently threading one coiled wire out of the knot.

He grinned and discarded the menus. "What would Janet say?" he sighed, and flopped onto the couch to survey her work.

"Hey, I had a salad today," Sam protested. She paused, and he watched in amusement as she wrinkled her brow in concentration. "This week," she amended.

"Uh-huh. And pizza last night. And mess hall casserole the night before." Daniel groaned slightly; the casserole in particular lingered in his mind, a rather tasteless concoction that Teal'c alone had seemed to enjoy. Sam had merely peppered it with enough hot sauce to make him wince, and rolled her eyes heavenward as Janet made pointed comments about SG-1's dietary habits.

The doctor had, he suspected, gone to the commissary solely to shoo them out, but relented when she saw their air of determined immobility. Jack O'Neill's absence had, if anything, bound the remaining three members of the team more closely. And if they chose to take their meals together in the bowels of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, haunting the facility even on their imposed downtime, there was little that Janet, or their new commander Robert Makepeace, could do about it.

Makepeace... Daniel bristled at the thought of him. The colonel barely looked Teal'c in the eye, had a grudging respect for Sam, but none at all for Daniel. Career military, he thought with contempt, then felt guilty for it as he glanced at her. Well, Sam and Jack were different. Or, at least, he'd thought Jack was. Dammit, he knew Jack was.

"Why did you disconnect the VCR, anyway?" Sam asked, her voice muffled as she wound her frame around the furniture in order to peer at the dusty recesses behind the television.

Daniel realized that he was staring squarely at his colleague's trim, jean-clad rear end, and slid his eyes away sheepishly. "Huh? Oh...." He shrugged -- of course, she couldn't see it -- and explained, "I was going to move the tv into the bedroom, but changed my mind."

Sam made an adjustment to the back of the set, then straightened and shot him a dubious look. She refrained from comment, however, until she was settled beside him. "Sleeping on the couch is my prerogative."

"I'll remember that," he quipped. "It may come in handy."

She punched him in the arm. Hard.

"Hey!" he protested, rubbing it. "What'd I do?"

She didn't respond. In fact, the set of her shoulders was faintly reminiscent of... Was she sulking?

Daniel stretched out his arm -- still throbbing, he thought irritably -- and tentatively settled it around her shoulders. He felt, absurdly, like he should be yawning theatrically as he did it. "Sam, what's the matter?"

She was still for a moment, then shook herself. Putting her feet on his coffee table, she contemplated the still blank tv screen, then finally reached up with one hand and squeezed his fingers. "It's nothing. I'm being stupid."

He waited.

She exhaled noisily at his silence. "You are so annoying."

"It's a mutual admiration society, then. 'Fess up."

Sam reluctantly shifted, pointing in the direction of the television set with one foot. "I thought it was agreed. If one of us is having problems sleeping...."

Daniel immediately felt guilty -- luxury had become habit had become need. And he'd resisted it, lately. It hadn't occurred to him that she might not have called recently because he hadn't called.

"Well --" he shrugged, as best he could with her tucked next to him. "We see so much of each other in the daytime, I didn't want you to get tired of me." He didn't mean for it to sound flippant. They had been spending even more time than usual together since that day at Jack's house, before the Colonel left for his retirement -- exile -- on Edora.

It was a memory he could do without. The three of them had been cramped together in Daniel's car, Teal'c looking as if he might burst through the roof at any second. Parked just down the block from O'Neill's house -- a house they knew well, where they'd spent time watching hockey games, discussing astronomy, hosting basketball contests against SG-2 -- they had contemplated one another glumly.

Finally Daniel had elected himself to go, to try to get one final reading on O'Neill's mood, his scheme, whatever the hell it was that had forced him to lash out at them. And afterwards, they'd both read the results on his face, because the three of them hadn't talked about it since. But the downtime that Hammond had imposed before their first mission with Makepeace in command had not scattered them, if that was the intention.

"Oh, Daniel." She couldn't really look up at him without pulling back, so she turned her head the other way instead. "I'm not going to get tired of you."

Tired, indeed. He closed his eyes -- he was tired of thinking about Jack, tired of analyzing the amount of time he spent with Sam, tired of wondering why he was still at the SGC, period. Everything seemed very, very confusing at the moment.

"Huh." Her soft exhalation surprised him from his lethargy, and he didn't realize that she'd been running her thumb back and forth across the back of his hand until she stopped.

"What?"

She'd tilted her head, was looking closely at his hand, still draped across her shoulder. "Oh-- " She hesitated, then continued softly, "I just realized something. I had a dream about you. About your hands."

There wasn't anything remarkable about his hands, as far as he knew. They were calloused, ink-stained -- scholar's hands, even if he now knew how to hold a gun as comfortably as a pen. But she turned her head back to his, and there was something in her eyes...

Sam had tilted her face up, was holding her breath, he realized. It was unmistakably an invitation.

To his surprise, he took it.

Her mouth was warm and yielding beneath his. Oh, he knew her lips well, had seen them curve into a delighted, impish smile as they shared a joke over the conference table, and watched them pressed into a hard line as she contemplated some untenable fact. But this... this was a revelation. Her lips fit his perfectly.

He lost count of the seconds as they melted into one another. And then she was gone.

"I'm sorry," she blurted. "I shouldn't, we shouldn't..." Her face -- stricken, flushed, beautiful -- was still a mere fraction away from his.

"Why not?"

The words echoed in his own head. Why not, after all? When had he not loved Sam Carter? He'd loved her intelligence from the day he met her, loved her fierce determination not to show any weakness, her ability to indulge in silliness when he needed it, the way her eyes lit up when they worked on a problem together, her silences as she helped him grieve. He'd loved her as a friend as long as he could remember. Why not more?

"What's the worst they can do?" he continued, and realized with surprise that his voice was shaky. "Exile us, too?"

Her lips twitched. He could feel her breath on his face.

"You think with your heart, Daniel, not your head. You always have." Sam raised her hand to his cheek, her fingers grazing it lightly.

"Is that so bad?"

Her lips on his gave him her answer.

* * *

**Part V: "It's amazing how one discovery can change everything." (New Ground)**

Her hands were shaking.

She wished that it was a dream, that she could write off this lack of control to a nightmare. But how many times -- at home, off-world, once even in the middle of a briefing -- had her hands just started shaking imperceptibly for no reason that she could find?

Liar, liar, liar, liar. There were too many reasons. But she wasn't about to start cataloguing them. Sam flicked the television off with a wave of the remote, and slipped off the couch. Coffee, she decided. Strong, hot, bracing, comforting Java.

As she filled the coffee pot, she had an impulsive desire to call Janet, to submit herself to one of their insane girls' nights out. It was too late, of course -- Cassie had undoubtedly been in bed for hours, no baby-sitter was scheduled, the restaurants were closed. All that would be open to them were smoky bars, or clubs crowded with twenty-somethings with lackluster jobs ("No ma'am, it's not a hangover, I must be coming down with something"), who would make her feel older than she was. But she couldn't shake the wish for teeth-rattling music and gyrating insensibility.

Jonas had loved to shout in her ear as a pounding bass thrust them -- crazy on whisky and adrenaline -- together.

It was no mystery why she was thinking about Jonas so much. The man she'd pledged, once upon a time, to spend the rest of her life with. Till death ("Killing a man is no badge of honor." O'Neill as philosopher, a funny sort of comfort) do them part. So they hadn't made the vows, not in words -- only by touch in nights of fierce lovemaking, in plans that disintegrated into even fiercer fights.

Daniel was so different. Her time with him was spent in gentleness, basking in the simple adoration of his look, his touch.

Sam smiled into her coffee cup. She hadn't necked on a couch since she was fifteen and Dad caught her with Bobby Randolph in the family room.

Daniel was addictive. His kiss -- where had her bookworm learned to kiss like that? -- when he left her at the front door sent her nerves jangling for more. The way he smiled as they passed one another in the halls of the SGC was almost enough to make her throw caution to the wind, to forget patience and circumspection and trip him right there, push him into an office and make him scream for mercy.

So what exactly was her problem? Why didn't she just pretend she was an alien temptress and rip his clothes off?

"Argh!" She started to get up from her chair, but knew that there was nowhere to go. So much for her disavowal of self-analysis tonight.

Conservative, careful, restrained Major Carter. Healer of the emotionally wounded, Jonas had called her, being -- typically -- both accurate and unfair. And damn him anyway, for making her (he'd love that; control even from the afterlife) question her own feelings. But she couldn't help reflecting that she'd held hands with Martouf, and pawned Nareem off with a cat, but was hopelessly, willingly, losing her equilibrium with Daniel.

Complicated didn't even begin to cover their relationship. She'd mourned him desperately when she thought him dead, too many times; fought to save him from old age and madness; cried for his losses even when he wouldn't.

And that was the catch. Be rational, Sam, no matter how much it hurts.

He'd lost so much, and she'd been there for him. It was Jonas all over again. Complicated by the fact, of course, that even she and Jonas had not served in the same unit. On the same four man team, no less. Even if Daniel -- so stubbornly civilian -- had no qualms about flouting regulations and common sense, could she keep doing so?

Her throat was impossibly dry. She sipped her coffee.

Yes, she envied Sha're to have had him to herself on the wilderness of Abydos. It was no wonder he fought so hard, for so long, to get back that little bit of paradise. And Sha're still bound him to her, even now, through the Harcesis. They'd spent months haphazardly searching for her child.

So no matter how much she wanted him, no matter how closely she might analyze the point at which her feelings for him had crossed that slipshod boundary between friendship and love, no matter if she admitted the number of times she'd beat down decidedly carnal feelings about her wonderfully oblivious team mate, no matter if she pushed aside her doubts when she was with him... tonight her hands were shaking.

She was scared to death that they'd come to their senses.

She nearly dropped her cup when the phone rang.

"You drank all my coffee," he complained, without preamble.

"It's my way of forcing you to go grocery shopping," she replied lightly, trying to push back the attack of maudlin thoughts. "Hello to you too."

"Hello, Sam. Do you know that it's been six hours and forty minutes since I last saw you?"

"Oh?" Yes, she could get used to being loved like this. She tucked her feet underneath her, perched precariously on the chair. "What time was it when I left, in military time?"

"Very funny."

They'd missed dinner together. Daniel was still deep into his orientation for Nyan when she left the SGC; the poor refugee scientist's face had grown more and more ashen as Daniel sketched the history of the Goa'uld. She'd escaped gratefully. "How's Nyan doing?"

"Better, I think. We're going to compare mythologies tomorrow; I'm hoping that there might be some trace of Kheb's location in the Bedrosian myths."

"Hmm," she replied, doing her best to be noncommittal. Her head hurt; aftereffects from Rygar's zat gun? "Daniel, when Rygar shot me...." Okay, so she couldn't think of a way to end the question. Self-reflection was making her sloppy.

"Did I want to rip his throat out?" He sounded cautious now, probably surprised by this topic. "Or are you wondering if I would have folded?"

"No," she said quickly. "I know you wouldn't." Spit it out, Major. "I guess I'm wondering," -- again -- "whether we should tell the Colonel...."

"That I've been stringing you along for months with a promise to cook, and haven't come through?"

Okay, so he wasn't in the mood to talk about it. Again. "Daniel," she warned him.

"It's none of his business," he replied flatly.

But it was, even if she didn't have a great desire to subject their relationship to SGC scrutiny ("Yes, General, I know there are regulations about relationships between team members." -- where was conservative, careful, restrained Major Carter, now?).

"Do you ever think about those other Sams?" Daniel asked abruptly, when she didn't continue.

Whoa, major change of topic. Maybe they both had insecurities, after all. "You've been seeing other Sams? Maybe you should get your eyes checked." Sam with long hair, Sam with a brittle smile, Sam I am not the Sam that I was, thank you very much. "Are you asking if I have plans to propose to the Colonel?"

He laughed. "I know you better than that, Samantha Carter." Oh, the way her toes curled when he said her name like that. And it wasn't, she thought with relief, the particular insecurity that she'd feared. "No, I meant... have you thought about what it would be like to not be in the military?"

Wow, not to be in the military. Not such a major change of topic after all.

"Sure," she said carefully, toying with the handle of her mug. "Why?"

"Oh, just thinking." Daniel Jackson playing at being casual. He was pathetically bad at it.

"You should stop thinking." Let him off the hook, she thought. Let yourself off the hook. "You should, in fact, be sleeping."

"I know, I know. I just wanted to hear your voice."

"Which is as it should be," she replied matter-of-factly. "Always leave them wanting more; at least, that's what Dad taught me."

He nearly choked on whatever he'd found to drink in lieu of coffee. "Somehow I have a hard time picturing you discussing seduction wiles with the General."

"It's a management technique," she replied, stifling a laugh. And not about to reveal that Jacob had been referring to Bobby Randolph in particular. Her father had had unexpected depths of humor in the face of teenage angst. "Goodnight, Daniel."

"G'night Sam."

She set the phone aside, unfolded her legs, and waited for the circulation to return. Finally, when she was sure she could stand without staggering, she paced to the sink and rinsed her mug.

Her hands were still shaking.

* * *

**Part VI: "Because it is so clear, it takes a longer time to realize it." (Maternal Instinct)**

"Pick up, Sam." Daniel was muttering to himself, rather than her machine; he wasn't about to let her get away with leaving him talking to thin air. So he kept calling, hanging up before the machine picked up, calling again, and damn the two-ring rule. He glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. She couldn't be asleep yet, even if Jack had kept him out later than he wanted, insisting on celebrating the slaughter of Apophis' troops on Kheb.

Be nice, Daniel. It had been a patented victory for their team, even if their team had nothing to do with it. "Here's to Mother Nature, and Daniel the fire eater" had been Jack's toast, and Ferretti -- still getting over the flu, but haunting the SGC nonetheless -- had choked on his bacon, he was laughing so hard. The waitress just smiled and refilled their coffee; the staff of the pancake house had, by now, become used to the same groups of soldiers traipsing in at odd hours.

"I wasn't eating fire, Jack," he'd protested weakly, knowing that he was about to be stuck with another annoying nickname. "I was just controlling it. And I wasn't even doing that."

But all the while he was wondering why Sam had begged off from the group outing, why she had been so quiet through the debriefing, and afterwards.

She'd been right, as usual. She'd tried to reason with him as he demonstrated his "powers". And he had been obnoxious, confident that he was well on his way to some higher plane of existence. Hubris, meet Daniel Jackson.

"Hello?"

"What's the matter, Sam?"

"You could try beginning your conversations with hello, you know." She sounded immeasurably tired.

Not a good beginning. He sighed and sank onto a chair, trying to pull together the thoughts he'd been mulling over while O'Neill force-fed him pancakes. "Listen, I wanted to apologize. I was caught up, in the temple. I should have listened to you."

"Why?"

Because being pigheaded is not particularly attractive? "Because... because you were right. I shouldn't have been so quick to follow my instincts." Okay, and maybe he had been obstinate to spite Jack, just a little. A tiny bit. A lot.

"But Daniel," she answered softly, "you were right. You knew the child was there, and you found him. Isn't that all that matters?"

"Uh -- right." If they were agreeing, why did he feel as though he had lost an argument? "So, do you want to come over and, er, have some coffee?" He was already floating on coffee, infused with caffeine, and would undoubtedly be dreaming of it if his bladder let him get any sleep. Not that he wouldn't prefer alternate ways to stave off sleep, preferably with her help.

This dance that they were doing around one another frustrated and delighted him. It wasn't as if he'd had much experience dating. PhDs left little time for extracurricular activities; publish or perish had kept him focused on his research. He'd fallen into marriage with Sha're without holding hands at movie theaters or dithering about the perfect romantic restaurant. After all, choices on Abydos had been largely limited to which sand dune.

She was stalling, he realized abruptly. It jolted him into soberness. "Sam, what's wrong?"

"I'm going to take some time off," she said quickly, as if she had to get the words out before they escaped her. He might have been more surprised if Jack walked into his office and expressed an earnest desire to learn Latin, or if Teal'c took up surfing. Sam Carter did not vacate the SGC unless so ordered.

"Are we going on vacation?"

She ignored the joke. "I need some time away, Daniel."

He felt as if she'd walked into his office and slapped him. "You mean away from me." She didn't deny it. "Why don't you explain to me, very carefully, what I've done?"

"Oh, Daniel." Whatever he was expecting in reply, it wasn't this carefully controlled anguish. "You haven't done anything."

"Then what is it? Talk to me, Sam."

"I just think you need space."

"I need space?" he asked incredulously. He was gripping the kitchen table, he realized, the hard edge of the top biting into his palm.

"To figure out what you're going to do now."

"Now what?"

"Now that Sha're's child is safe."

Maybe she should have slapped some sense into him. He belatedly put her silence together with Jack's disconcerting, measured looks between bites of sausage. What wonderfully thoughtful friends he had. Were Janet and Teal'c back at the SGC right now, planning his going-away party?

He hadn't thought beyond finding the Harcesis, he admitted to himself. But to them -- particularly one overanalyzing, ever-considerate Major -- the facts were stark. His wife was dead. Her child was safer than he'd ever be in the custody of the SGC. The two obligations which bound one civilian scholar to an active duty military unit had vanished.

"Tell me you weren't thinking about leaving," she challenged him.

Betrayed by his subconscious. Yes, he'd dreamed of leaving the Stargate program. But not in the way she meant. "No," he protested, scrambling to catch up with what was already in her mind a well-rehearsed argument. "I asked if you'd thought about it-- "

"Daniel, that's worse." She swallowed loudly, and he thought with near-panic that she was on the verge of tears. "I can't be the reason you stay. It's not enough. It's not enough for either of us."

"It must be nice to be so self-sacrificing," he said bitterly, surprising himself, but angry too. "Dammit, Sam, are you so scared of being happy that you'll push away everyone who cares about you? Everything that you might want that doesn't fit into your well-ordered, military life?"

Her silence was oppressive. He clenched his jaw, wishing he could take it back.

"Sam --" What could he say to make things right? "I'm sorry." And then, because it was the only thing he had left to offer to her, "I'll think about it."

The words tasted like ashes in his mouth.

* * *

**Part VII: "No matter how dense?" (Crystal Skull)**

If mental telepathy worked, he would have called her by now.

Sam realized that it was dark already, that she'd let dusk slide into evening without noticing. She flicked on the lamp at the side of the couch, but it was only out of habit, really; she'd long ago abandoned the book on her lap.

Janet, pestering her about the aftereffects of neutrinos and radiation and stubbornness, had kicked her out of her lab. She'd thought about tracking down the Colonel, but had decided she wasn't up to making conversation, particularly not about fishing. It wasn't a sport -- it was a thinly disguised excuse for naps, in her experience, and not one she was interested in. Though when she'd seen them last, Teal'c had been tolerating O'Neill's enthusiastic descriptions of catfish (Schroedinger with fins and feline sailing stripes?) fairly well.

Daniel had already been long gone, at that point. He'd headed back to the hospital where Nicholas Ballard had spent the past decade, ready to collect his grandfather's things and spin a story about dear old Nick finally agreeing to move in with the last of his family. She'd asked, with that combination of on-duty civility and -- despite everything -- firmly-grounded friendship, if he wanted company. He'd turned her down with a grateful smile. Whatever mess she'd made of their personal relationship, the last week had proven that they could work together without conflict.

Well, the points during the last week when she was conscious, and Daniel was in the right dimension.

And if she'd wanted, and been unable, to do more than put her hand over his as he rummaged in his desk for Nick's long-forgotten power of attorney... Well, that was her own fault.

She put her head back against the top of the sofa and closed her eyes. Get a grip, Sam.

Footsteps in the hallway outside her door brought her back to attention. She was off the couch nearly before the doorbell had finished echoing, her book falling unheeded to the floor. The lock frustrated her for a moment before finally giving way, allowing the door to swing opn.

Daniel looked tired, though he'd obviously had time to shower and change. He'd shed even the regulation t-shirt; short hair (fine, clipped strands, gleefully maintained at regulation length by the barber), glasses, button-up shirt and slacks that didn't quite match, somber expression, a small package in his hands.

"Come in," she invited him, and stepped aside to let him pass. He stopped just short of the arrangement of furniture which served as her living room, however.

"I brought you something," he said, and offered her the package. "I was going through Nick's stuff, and found it."

She took it tentatively, her fingers stumbling over the paper taped so carefully at the edges. She peeled back the sheath and revealed a small book -- a journal, with a sky-blue cover and creamy pages. Sam looked up at him, unsure of its significance.

"Nick had a bunch of them," Daniel explained, taking it from her grasp and flipping through the still-blank pages. "They were his dream books. He wrote in them all the time, I guess. Ideas, memories. But mostly dreams." He pressed it back into her hands. "I thought you could use it."

"Thank you." She couldn't breathe, for some reason. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

"Sam, I've been thinking."

Here it comes, she thought dully. They'd had no real time for private conversation. The phone had remained undisturbed on her bedside table at night. It wasn't a conversation she'd been looking forward to, anyway.

"And I have no intention of leaving the SGC. At least, not any time soon."

She stared at him. "You...." She gripped the journal tightly.

"You rat!" Military training and momentum sent him backward, her forward, both toppling over the arm of the couch in a tangle of limbs. The furniture protested against their gymnastics with an ominous creak, and she thumped the journal on his chest.

"You wanted me to think that this..." She paused, struggling for air against his laughter and her own raggedly beating heart. "That you were leaving."

"I can't help it if you think too much," he protested, freeing one arm from where it was wedged against the cushions, and brushing the hair from her eyes. "And Sam, you definitely think too much." He tapped the journal. "Personally, I hope that you get lots of use out of it. I just want to be able to sleep through your scribbling, okay?"

"You're asking me to wear you out?" Her lips curved into a smile, despite her effort to restrain it. "Your idea of a romantic proposition needs some work, Doctor Jackson." But she slid the book to the floor and turned her attention to his lips, nonetheless.

When she found her voice again, she was sheltered in the curve of his arm, the downy fabric of his shirt against her cheek. "Have you been thinking about it, really?" It. Her. Them.

His arm tightened against her; as he spoke his words echoed hollowly from his chest to her ear. "I have. A lot."

She raised her head, chin on his chest, to find blue eyes staring steadily back at her.

"When Jack visited Skaara," Daniel continued, "he asked me if I wanted to go with him. It wasn't just that I couldn't go back, though. I didn't want to." He swallowed, closing his eyes fleetingly. "Kasuf and Skaara will always be family to me. But my life on Abydos is over. It was over the day that Sha're gave birth. I knew it when we buried her there."

She pressed her fingers to his shoulder, and he moved them, briefly, to his lips.

"Seeing Nick again, and then going through his stuff... pictures of my parents, a lifetime of research. It made me think about my life, and realize that I never had any intention of leaving the Stargate program after we found the child. I just hadn't thought about why." He took a deep breath. "You are the reason, at least part of it."

She started to speak, but he shook his head slightly, cutting her off. "You, and Jack, and Teal'c, and Cassie. Nick. The people who are out there doing more than I can, like Jacob. Nyan and all the others who, I hope, never meet the Goa'uld."

If her mind treacherously provided a few more names (Ke'ra, lovely, brilliant, blonde solace), he'd forgive her.

"I won't -- can't -- let revenge be the only thing that keeps me going. But I have even more reasons to stay exactly where I am than I did when I came back to Earth three years ago." He shook his head ruefully, perhaps a little overwhelmed by his own speech. "The answer was perfectly clear to me, Sam. I just didn't realize how clear. Or why, until you gave me a much-needed kick in the backside."

"Always happy to oblige," she said lightly (never, never, never again). "If you promise to reciprocate."

"Not a problem," he said with a self-satisfied smile, but sobered almost instantly. He struggled awkwardly for a moment to lift himself further up against the arm of the couch, and, seeing his intent, she raised her own body, using her knee as leverage to pull back into a sitting position.

"I promise more than that," he continued when they were facing one another. "I promise I won't leave you, Sam."

The sight of him in the lab when she was struggling with the particle accelerator came back to her -- wet hair, crisp, new shirt at two in the morning. Her own fears, the nightmares that Apophis had awakened, had played out on Edora amidst a shower of brilliant meteors and a world shuddering beneath her feet. Now he was offering her a kind of solace, a vow never to come home without her.

(Her father's face so still, like a sleepwalker; her father who never cried, his face wet)

Sam threaded her fingers through his. "I promise to think with my heart as well as my head," she offered. Then she added, truthfully, "At least, sometimes."

Daniel's lips twitched into a smile. "I promise..." but he trailed off.

She drew him towards her with their joined hands. "What?" she encouraged him.

"I promise that someday... I will cook."

 

**Epilogue:**

it is true  
there is love that  
is decided upon  
and love that spreads like a stain  
of ink in absorbent cloth  
there is love  
that makes sense of your life  
and love that makes you senseless  
about life  
\-- Diane Wakoski

 

Her hair is beautiful -- short, spun gold. It is practical and enticing, like her. He could get lost in the sensation of it curling across his fingers, sloping down the nape of her neck. From there he might hesitate, torn between the smooth track of her shoulder or the hard edge of her collar. But the lure of listening to his name whispered in the hollow of her throat is inescapable. The blue of her eyes tease him, sapphires winking beneath half-closed lids until she guides him to her. In her delight, even in the dark, they gleam...

"Were you dreaming?"

"No." He drew the sheet tighter around his back, trapping their combined heat with it. "I was thinking. But it was a good thought."

**Author's Note:**

> I have the best support group in the galaxy -- thanks to Karen for encouragement and comments; Chris, whose ever-insightful, sympathetic musings gave me the momentum to keep writing; Sharon, who makes everything so complicated! but in a good way; Jill and Perri for being the best darned beta readers ever and keeping my rhetorical flightiness in line as best they could.
> 
> Finally, this is for Jacquie (if she can stand it!), because she has a way with words, and with Sam.


End file.
